Cigarette sales in S. Korea keep falling in 2018

Cigarette sales in South Korea kept falling this year on higher price and the government-led anti-smoking campaign, a government report showed Monday.

The number of 20-cigarette packs sold here was 28.98 million for the first 10 months of this year, down 1.9 percent from the same period of last year, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

The monthly average cigarette sale tumbled from 3.63 million in 2014 to 2.77 million in 2015 as the cigarette price rose by 80 percent to 4,500 won (4 U.S. dollars) per pack.

The monthly average figure gained to 3.05 million in 2016, but it declined to 2.94 million in 2017 as the government ordered tobacco companies to put graphic warnings on the upper part of both cigarette packs beginning December 2016. The reading shed to 2.9 million in the January-October period of this year.

Despite the lower tobacco sale, the government collected 9.7 trillion won (8.6 billion U.S. dollars) in taxes from sales of cigarette for the first 10 months of this year, thanks to higher cigarette price. It was up 2.6 percent from the same period of last year.